The debate over a crypto-Jewish presence in New Mexico: The role of ethnographic allegory and orientalism

The Pueblo cultures of New Mexico, in particular, have been orientalized in Anglo discourse using the same images and metaphors that Said uncovered in Western discourse about the Middle East. "Difference" is established most of all by focusing on what strikes Anglo observers as exotic about Pueblo culture. "Inferiority" is established partly by constructing Pueblo culture as timeless (and so quite unlike the progressive West). This explains, for Babcock (1997), why Pueblo pottery that is decorated in the ancient manner is taken as "authentic" but figurative pottery (often depicting whites) is regarded as "tourist trash." Mainly, however, Pueblo inferiority is established by constructing culture as implicitly feminine. The feminization of Pueblo culture in Anglo discourse explains, for Babcock (1990, 1997), why the study of Pueblo pottery (which is made by women) has generated more scholarly literature than any other aspect of Pueblo culture; why pottery has been the primary Pueblo trade item; why Maria Marti nez of San Ildefonso Pueblo became the most well-known Pueblo artist; and why "olla maiden" images (depictions of traditionally-dressed Pueblo women who are either making or carrying an olla [water jug]), have long been the master symbol of Pueblo culture in Anglo-American popular culture.

The orientalization of New Mexico can also be seen (literally) at Santa Fe, the one city that most epitomizes New Mexico for outsiders. As Chris Wilson (1997:232) suggests in an extended study of that city, "Santa Fe has methodically transformed itself into a harmonious Pueblo-Spanish fantasy through speculative restorations, the removal of overt signs of Americanization and historic design renewal for new buildings." The net result has been a proliferation of pseudo-adobe buildings that renders Santa Fe simultaneously exotic (at least by Anglo standards) and timeless (by virtue of the supposed continuity with an imagined architectural past) for the hordes of Anglo tourists who pass through each year.

In the specific case of Hispano culture, however, the orientalizing predisposition that otherwise pervades Anglo discourse on New Mexico runs into a problem. Mainly this happens because those Hispano traditions that are most easily available to establish Hispano culture as exotic (and so, different) are also traditions that are thoroughly masculine, something that prevents the teminization which establishes inferiority in orientalist discourse generally.

For example, over the past several decades there has been much interest on the part of Anglo audiences in the santos [holy images], including both bultos [three dimensional images carved of wood] and retablos [two dimensional images painted on a wooden plank], produced by a relatively small number of Hispano santeros in northern New Mexico over the period 1790-1830. What is most striking about santero art (read: what makes it most exotic from an Anglo perspective) is a cluster of interrelated stylistic elements which function to ensure that this art is quite different from the high art more familiar to Anglo audiences in Europe or North America. (2) Unfortunately (at least, given the demands of orientalist discourse), as exotic as santero art might be, all the early santeros were male.